Walton Castle must have looked much like this in the 1600’s

The Roman fort at Felixstowe in Suffolk stood on a sandy cliff.  It went into the sea between 1700 and 1750, and there are still remains of it on the sea bed, a few metres off-shore.  I collected some old drawings of the fort here, known as Walton Castle. Today I saw on twitter here an […]

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A 1987 plan for the ruins of the Roman fort of “Walton Castle”

Walton Castle is the local name for the remains of a Roman fort, now submerged beneath the waves offshore at Felixstowe in Suffolk, Britain.  Resources for study of this monument are limited, and I have discussed them in other posts. One interesting article appeared in, of all things, a popular magazine.  Such an item is, […]

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The Errington sub-aqua expedition to “Walton castle”, 1969 – the press clippings

The ruins of the Roman fort of the Saxon shore at Felixstowe, known as “Walton Castle”, were examined in 1969 by a team of divers from the Ipswich branch of the British Sub-Aqua club, led by Jeff Errington.  Ipswich museum liason was Elizabeth Owles, although I have yet to locate the survey report filed with […]

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Old drawings of “Walton Castle”, the Roman fort of the Saxon Shore at Felixstowe

We do possess a number of old drawings of the Roman “Saxon Shore” fort that once stood on the cliff at Felixstowe. These show what it looked like, before it went over the cliff into the sea, and then after.  These were printed in 1907 in The Victoria history of the county of Suffolk, Vol. […]

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From my diary: looking for the Roman fort of “Walton Castle”

In late antiquity the Saxons started to make raids into the Roman province of Britannia.  This they did by sailing across the North Sea – the Narrow Seas, as it is also known – in open boats.  In response to this the Romans built a chain of impressive forts along the British coast, under the […]

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Looking for the vanished North Gate of Ipswich

The Suffolk town of Ipswich has almost no historical monuments, or historical feel, despite being one of the oldest towns in England.  Indeed it was founded in the early Anglosaxon period.  Three gates are preserved in street names – west, north and east – and there is certainly evidence for two of the medieval gates, […]

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Tutorial: How to download the LIDAR datasets from the UK Environment Agency website

Lidar is a technique for displaying the shape of the ground using pulses of laser light.  The results have been widely used to discover Roman monuments, as they can process them to omit modern buildings, trees, etc.  I have been interested in this ever since I discovered some Lidar images of the seabed showing the […]

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Lidar on the Roman fort at Felixstowe

A kind correspondent, David Blocker, has looked at the Lidar images that I posted, of the ruins of “Walton Castle”, the Saxon Shore Roman fort lying submerged near Felixstowe in Suffolk, and annotated them.  The results are fascinating: Then with annotation: As a reminder, the rough sketch map drawn by the diver Jeff Errington: He […]

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From my diary

I was able to sit at my computer this evening for the first time and work a little on the translation of chapter 11 of the Vita of St George.  So I am clearly improving.  But I still can’t really walk, or leave the house, and I must keep my foot elevated most of the […]

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From my diary

I have now discovered why I was unable to locate the 1969 survey report by Jeff Errington, reporting on the dives to the submerged Roman fort at Felixstowe.  The article from 2000 said that it was at Ipswich Museum.  But an email from one of the article authors, Tom Plunkett, reveals that a mass of […]

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